Controlling the Technologies of Privacy Invasion

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Computing and related information technologies have generated vast new pressures from government and private organizations to acquire and use information on "private" citizens. These practices include the monitoring of private citizens' movements by police and other state agencies; the sale and trade of consumers' personal data for marketing, credit reporting, insurance and other commercial purposes; and the appropriation of financial data on private citizens by government agencies involved in taxation and other enforcement activities. Since the 1960's, every Western democracy has enacted legislation and policy to control publicly-defined abuses of information technology leading to erosion of personal privacy. Various strategies to control privacy abuses include the creation of privacy ombudsmen, industry self-regulation, governmental privacy protection boards and the like. In a one-year pilot investigation, this study aims to identify cases that will form the basis for a full, comparative, cross-national study of privacy protection efforts. The year will be spent interviewing key figures in personal data protection in the US and abroad; these will include academic specialists, government and corporate officials, and privacy activists. Other activities during this first year will include analyses of primary and secondary documentary sources relating to potential cases for study. The aim will be to generate a list of notable successes and failures in legislative and policy efforts to protect personal data - along with a series of documentary sources and potential interviewees to serve as sources in the ensuing investigation of these efforts.